End Of Part One

Wow, I am going home tomorrow! Hard for that fact to sink in! It’s been 11 months now since I left Ireland! In some ways, time seems to have flown but in other ways, it seems a long time since I landed in Beijing last year!

It’s been a great year! I have been to so many places, seem so many things, met so many people, and learned loads of Chinese. I think a person can learn a lot by living abroad and can find new ways of looking at things!

I’m all Karaoke’d out at this stage! Friday night, we had a bit of a party with Rob and some others. We drank ant-nourished baijiu (Chinese firewater)! Rob bought these dried ants up in Jilin province. You are supposed to put some into baijiu and allow the baijiu to be enriched by all the lovely ant juices! See picture below:

You then filter off the ants and you are left with a lovely concoction (below) , which you can drink in the form of shots!

The ants are supposed to increase one’s virility!!! Actually, I think the baijiu tasted better with the ant juices rather than straight! The only strange thing was that there were some ant legs still floating in the baijiu after filtering!!

After all those shenanigans, we headed to KTV (Karaoke) and had a great night of drunken untunefulness!

My voice was gone yesterday! And last night I went back with some Chinese friends for more singing! So, my voice is really gone today, Mad, I haven’t been to KTV in China since I arrived last August, and now I go twice in 1 weekend! I love KTV. Most foreigners hate it! I wish they had it back in Ireland!